Echoes Down the Canyon
The public are restless today. And who can blame them? News that the good ship Aurora sailed no further than the Isle of Wight, thus ruining hundreds of luxury cruises, must be weighing heavily on their minds. The cruise has now been abandoned. I cried for hours over that one.
Whatever the cause, there are some strange outbursts of choral bellowing this morning in the railway station at which I work. And this is not an isolated incident. Last week a choir was singing its heart out to the accompaniment of a dozen Tsunami charity buckets. In such circumstances the station comes across as a living breathing entity, the blood running through its veins unpredictable and sometimes poisonous. Today the weird disturbances do not seem unfriendly. What the hell? With such a mass of people, you have an audience or a mob at a moment’s notice. Which can prove tricky – Terry Pratchett, I believe, once pointed out that the intelligence of a mob is the average intelligence of all those assembled divided by four. Which makes sense – a mob cannot form out of disparate wisdom...rather, they follow the principle of monkey see, monkey do. Monkey applaud the rubbish street artist. Monkey punch a member of staff because his train was late. Monkey disperse like the fucking clappers.
Those people outside with their cryptic roars, to extend the body metaphor, are a plate of food swallowed by the station and is now passing through its belly, perchance to cause indigestion or perhaps not...but within the hour the legs will part and they will be shat out into the sewer -- the Underground -- to float swiftly away to distant shores. Students of this kind of thing may wish to shoehorn in a joke about coming out the Arsenal, but such filth will not find a home here.
Oh, alright. Cockfosters. There, I said it.
A general hubbub, though, can be soothing. Some noises will always keep you awake, whereas some do the opposite, often in defiance of logic. Even traffic noise through the bedroom window can be acceptable, provided it is fast flowing and not prone to cars at traffic lights playing the well-known driving CD “Loud Shit for People Who Think the Chicks Really Dig a Pair of Cheap Blue Lights on the Bonnet of a Nova”.
After moving to my new flat in the south east of London, I have found the area wonderfully quiet, despite a situation for the first week where I couldn’t sleep because of the noise...made by the Landlord. Whoops! (To his eternal credit he sorted it out the second I brought the subject.) However, the quieter the sonic landscape externally, the more you notice the little things. Such as the electrical hum that comes through the walls and bounces around the bedroom like a beam of bad energy in a box of mirrors, making it impossible to track down the source. This is not a Soothing Noise, in the same way that distant music is always intrusive. I would rather have the aircraft passing overhead than this slight humming. Hmm...I suspect this is a problem with no solution and within a few weeks I will have grown used to it. Well, I bloody well hope so...you will know if I do not if I post a message consisting entirely of letters pressed by the average headbutt. Something like:
Jhnmuyt.
Hey, what do you know? An African village. And that particular experiment was brought to you by the good people at Everyone Else is in a Meeting Ltd.
I am still unable to make successful use of my time in the office when the work is slack. Here, my mornings are busy with a major deadline daily at 11am, after which the rope is not so taut and I can relax somewhat. But I want to make use of the gaps I always seem to fritter away...and bear in mind that my previous job was so uninvolved you could drive a herd of hippos through the spaces between work. I should be used to it. Once I had spent the first few weeks writing a series of scripts for a work in progress sitcom, I hit the doldrums and did more window gazing than anything else. (Right up to the point I began writing these things...) Sure, there were a few little games. Flicking paperclips into a cup was one.
What? Ye gods, what a nadir. This is what I am talking about. I need some kind of inspiration, and a blank screen is not a source of such a thing. All I need is something to focus on and I can finally...no, that’s it. I’m out of inspiration. Besides, my stomach is growling and my eyes are growing weary. So now I save this mess to floppy disk ready to post it from home tomorrow. The wonders of the information age, eh?
Whatever the cause, there are some strange outbursts of choral bellowing this morning in the railway station at which I work. And this is not an isolated incident. Last week a choir was singing its heart out to the accompaniment of a dozen Tsunami charity buckets. In such circumstances the station comes across as a living breathing entity, the blood running through its veins unpredictable and sometimes poisonous. Today the weird disturbances do not seem unfriendly. What the hell? With such a mass of people, you have an audience or a mob at a moment’s notice. Which can prove tricky – Terry Pratchett, I believe, once pointed out that the intelligence of a mob is the average intelligence of all those assembled divided by four. Which makes sense – a mob cannot form out of disparate wisdom...rather, they follow the principle of monkey see, monkey do. Monkey applaud the rubbish street artist. Monkey punch a member of staff because his train was late. Monkey disperse like the fucking clappers.
Those people outside with their cryptic roars, to extend the body metaphor, are a plate of food swallowed by the station and is now passing through its belly, perchance to cause indigestion or perhaps not...but within the hour the legs will part and they will be shat out into the sewer -- the Underground -- to float swiftly away to distant shores. Students of this kind of thing may wish to shoehorn in a joke about coming out the Arsenal, but such filth will not find a home here.
Oh, alright. Cockfosters. There, I said it.
A general hubbub, though, can be soothing. Some noises will always keep you awake, whereas some do the opposite, often in defiance of logic. Even traffic noise through the bedroom window can be acceptable, provided it is fast flowing and not prone to cars at traffic lights playing the well-known driving CD “Loud Shit for People Who Think the Chicks Really Dig a Pair of Cheap Blue Lights on the Bonnet of a Nova”.
After moving to my new flat in the south east of London, I have found the area wonderfully quiet, despite a situation for the first week where I couldn’t sleep because of the noise...made by the Landlord. Whoops! (To his eternal credit he sorted it out the second I brought the subject.) However, the quieter the sonic landscape externally, the more you notice the little things. Such as the electrical hum that comes through the walls and bounces around the bedroom like a beam of bad energy in a box of mirrors, making it impossible to track down the source. This is not a Soothing Noise, in the same way that distant music is always intrusive. I would rather have the aircraft passing overhead than this slight humming. Hmm...I suspect this is a problem with no solution and within a few weeks I will have grown used to it. Well, I bloody well hope so...you will know if I do not if I post a message consisting entirely of letters pressed by the average headbutt. Something like:
Jhnmuyt.
Hey, what do you know? An African village. And that particular experiment was brought to you by the good people at Everyone Else is in a Meeting Ltd.
I am still unable to make successful use of my time in the office when the work is slack. Here, my mornings are busy with a major deadline daily at 11am, after which the rope is not so taut and I can relax somewhat. But I want to make use of the gaps I always seem to fritter away...and bear in mind that my previous job was so uninvolved you could drive a herd of hippos through the spaces between work. I should be used to it. Once I had spent the first few weeks writing a series of scripts for a work in progress sitcom, I hit the doldrums and did more window gazing than anything else. (Right up to the point I began writing these things...) Sure, there were a few little games. Flicking paperclips into a cup was one.
What? Ye gods, what a nadir. This is what I am talking about. I need some kind of inspiration, and a blank screen is not a source of such a thing. All I need is something to focus on and I can finally...no, that’s it. I’m out of inspiration. Besides, my stomach is growling and my eyes are growing weary. So now I save this mess to floppy disk ready to post it from home tomorrow. The wonders of the information age, eh?
posted by Jamie at 1:13 PM
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